Matsuno House
The Matsuno House is a landmark location seen in incarnations of Osomatsu-kun, as well as Osomatsu-san. Its overall style and depiction may change with the standards of the era, though it has become common to see the design popularized by the Pierrot anime adaptation used as a basis. Manga (1960s run in Weekly Shonen Sunday) The house was initially depicted as a storefront-type home in the first chapter, as well as the twenty-third. This was to go along with the early setting of Matsuzo running a liquor store named "Mimatsuya", but it was soon phased out for him to be established as a salaryman. Sightings of a Matsuno home afterward in this run tend to have it as a one-story, modern 1960s flat home with a well-manicured yard and trees. There did not appear to be any kind of detailed floor plan or ideas for the interior of the home though, with some details also being dependent on the plot; there was a point in the run where the sextuplets convinced their parents to divide their room off into six parts and this stuck through some chapters, but wound up soon forgotten and reverted. In the case of a town map seen in Weekly Shonen Sunday, Iyami's house is shown to be neighboring theirs, though in the series itself this is only said to be the case in the chapter "Who Does the Flower Belong To?". 1966 anime Although the one-story home can sometimes be seen in a skit, this anime opted to more frequently depict the home with a second story up top. However, as with the manga, there cannot be said to be much detail and clarification when it comes to the division of its rooms and any floor plan. 1988 anime and Kodansha manga (Comic BomBom, TV Magazine), past scenes in "Osomatsu-san" This adaptation marked the start of the wooden two-story home getting popular usage. Though the manga itself would copy the exterior, there would be instances showing that Akatsuka had his own ideas of how the inside might work. It is a 4DK-style home plot. The "Burst of Laughter World-zansu" guide, in an attempt to reconcile early -kun content, goes with the idea that this was at one point the Mimatsuya liquor store itself but was converted to a family house after the children were born. It is (erroneously) used as the 1966 anime household in the Showa "Osomatsu-kun"-styled scenes in Osomatsu-san's "Osomatsu-kun Returns" and "Osomatsu-san Returns". The skit "Matsuzo and Matsuyo" also depicts it as being the family home since the start, with the Mimatsuya liquor store history thrown out and left aside this time around. In the manga, it is located in the Shimo-Ochiai district of Shinjuku Ward, though the 1988 anime and "Burst of Laughter World" state it to be in Akatsuka District. Generally, this can be said to be the layout of the 1988 house between the anime and "Burst of Laughter World" guide: First Floor * Entryway * A kitchen off to the viewers' right side of the house. A door leads to an exit on that side as well. * Besides the kitchen would be a narrow hallway by the stairwell, which also has the toilet room and bathroom on its right side. * The toilet room is generally just a small toilet, with the sink and mirror placed outside at the end of the hall. * The bathroom is not the most consistent, but contains a tub and sometimes a washing machine. * A Living/Dining Room space is in the center of the first floor and serves as a general multi-purpose room. It is surrounded by shoji on most of its sides, but the back portion has a fusuma-style wall/door. * Behind the previous room and its fusuma would be another space, that is confirmed to be the parents' room on specific occasions. * The left side of the house seen by the viewers would have a hallway that opens up to the side yard. Connecting the floors, by the center room space, would be the stairwell. Second Floor This is generally just a landing, as well as the sextuplets' bedroom which is separated from the hall by a fusuma. The right side of the room seen by viewers has no window (though it is once depicted with one in error in episode 68), with its space instead being taken up by a storage closet for the children. Our left side of the room has a window which opens up to a balcony for the boys to stand on, and for clothing to be dried out on. There is sometimes a small balcony in the front window as well. Osomatsu-san While some of the basics of the previous house were utilized for this layout, it also become more narrow in size to accommodate for modernization and larger buildings being built alongside it. In contrast to the 4DK-style house of the 1988, this home plan can be said to be a 3DK one. Some rooms are also swapped around and new spaces are added, when compared alongside the version above. This version of the house was in existence at some point before the Matsunos' high school days, as it is seen in the past in Osomatsu-san: The Movie. As -san itself is a parallel setting, Akatsuka Ward is not the same location as Akatsuka District, and it cannot be said to to be Shimo-Ochiai as in the -kun manga. Thus, the area that the Matsuno home could be in that corresponds closest to the actual world would be the Kichijoji district of Tokyo's Musashino city, though there are elements of other locales incorporated as well. The manga lecturer and doujin artist MAEDAX has famously put together doujinshi analyzing possible floor plans for the house and comparing it against the -kun home, in lieu of any official floor plan by Studio Pierrot. In fact, many details of the home are dependent on what's needed for the gag and story purposes of an episode skit and there may be quite the contradictions noticed if a viewer ever tries to map out a serious floor plan. First Floor * A bolder, more modern entryway * As before, the kitchen is off to the viewers' right side of the house, but it is now arranged a little differently and has a table for Matsuzo and Matsuyo to sit at and eat while their sons eat off in the living room. Yet in the "Proper Mecha" animation sequence, as well as a shot in "Accident?" and some other scenes, it appears that there is no hallway separating it from the living room as before and it is attached by way of another sliding door. However, other instances show there to indeed be a hall separating both rooms, even if this would now involve some suspension of disbelief to wonder how it and the other rooms (toilet, bathroom, etc.) could fit in this much smaller space. A window in the kitchen would imply to open out to our right side of the house as well. * As with before, though the stairwell and hall beside it aren't shown in great detail, it can be assumed their location has not changed too drastically. Yet depending which of the kitchen space depictions viewers would like to take as "actual canon", it may still have been moved some. The staircase itself is rarely shown to have a location in the show, though the end of Osomatsu-san: The Movie implies it's somewhere off in the viewers' right of the house. * While the toilet room's location doesn't have immediate clarification in-show, the general set-up and the mirror located outside it may indicate it is still roughly in a similar vicinity on the first floor. However, the appearance of a window and an outside fence in an instance may also make that seem unlikely, as the home is immediately surrounded by buildings (still, small inconsistencies and oddities like this do happen, and a window is shown to exist in the interior of the left side of the house). The "Proper Mecha" formation sequence in season 2's skit collection also has Choromatsu depicted as emerging from the center of the house, providing more confusion for viewers. Still, going by the DTV movie shorts and other instances, the hall and toilet room would appear to remain somewhere on the right side of the house. * The location of a bathroom is not clarified, as the Matsunos no longer use the tub in the house, but it may be assumed to still be in a vaguely similar location between the toilet and the kitchen. * As with -kun, the living/dining space is the center attraction of the household, with a bolder color scheme and a modern flat-screen TV. It is mostly surrounded by shoji, but the back has a fusuma as before. The pink hand-shaped chair and goldfish ceiling decoration are some notable fixtures to the room. * The space behind the living room no longer holds another room itself, but leads to the passage to the backyard, as suggested in "Iyami Has Arrived" and "Chibita's Revenge". * Since there is now no room for a side yard and veranda, the left side of the house and hallway is closed up, with only a side window to let in any light or weather. Any (smaller) yard space is relegated to the back of the house, and a doghouse is now part of the backyard. * However, as a contradiction to the above, the production art by Pierrot used for the Rement cardboard standee of the Matsunos' home shows there to be no backyard whatsoever (unlike what's seen in the show), and simply has two windows at the back of the house. This may be from an earlier concept of its exterior layout. Second Floor * As before, the sextuplets' room is on the top floor. But now, due to the division of this floor to create two bedrooms, their room is more towards the front of the house. As in the previous anime adaptation, there is a front window with a small balcony and a left side window with a larger one, though a green sofa now usually lies before the latter window. The right side of the room contains a small storage closet by the bookshelves. * Towards the back of the top floor, on the other side of the hall, is Matsuzo and Matsuyo's bedroom. It can be seen briefly in "Let's Become Independent" as well as "NEET Correction Facility". Windows can be shown to exist on the right side of the room and the back, marking an existence of more windows on the Matsuno home when compared to before. A storage closet exists on the left side of the room. On top of the roof of the house is a wooden laundry rack, used for hanging out the clothing. External Links Osomatsu-kun (1988) * A "Home Detective"'s conjectural floor plan for -kun, with liberties taken (Iemaga.jp, Japanese) * A miniature model crafted of the Matsuno home (Shuminoengei.jp, Japanese) Osomatsu-san * Samples of MAEDAX's doujinshi for the -san floor plans in a tweet(Maedax_x, Japanese) * A "Home Detective"'s conjectural floor plan for -san (Iemaga.jp, Japanese) * An analysis of locations in the home and some episodic differences (FrenchToast Matome blog, Japanese) * A fan's attempt at reconstructing the house in SweetHome, with some conjecture and confusion on certain ambiguous points of the house (Bibinbaday Hatena blog, Japanese) Category:Locations